KARACHI: Six members of the minority Ahmadi community were arrested by police on Saturday after it earlier provided protective custody to around two dozen of them following threats from a sectarian politico-religious party. The police registered cases against the Ahmadi community members after taking them into protective custody when Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) activists gathered outside their place of worship in Surjani town of Karachi to prevent them from offering “Friday prayers”.
“Today, we arrested six people on the complaint of a TLP activist in Surjani,” a senior police official said.
The approximately 500,000-member Ahmadi community in Pakistan is a religious minority which claims itself as Muslims but was officially declared “non-Muslim” in 1974 through an amendment in the constitution.
They have faced prosecution from right-wing religious parties notably in the Punjab province in recent times.
Amir Mahmood, a community spokesperson, said TLP activists had gathered outside their place of worship since Friday afternoon and threatened to tear it down.
DIG West, Irfan Baloch, said the TLP activists demanded the arrest of Ahmadi community leaders and the sealing of their place of worship.
Ahmadis have generally done their religious rites inside closed buildings to avoid trouble as their worship places have been destroyed and damaged by right-wing religious protesters in the past.
Mahmood said detaining Ahmadis from their place of worship for performing their rituals “was a grave violation of human rights and Pakistan’s Constitution”.
DIG Baloch said the police would get a “legal opinion” about the place of worship as it was a sensitive matter.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said on Tuesday it observed a growing trend of mob-led attacks on the homes of families belonging to religious minorities and their places of worship.
The HRCP in a report also mentioned the “arbitrary” detention of Ahmadis, the alleged desecration of their graves, and the vulnerability of Hindu and Christian women to forced conversion.
The HRCP in its report “Under Siege: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2023-24” said about 750 persons were in prison on charges of blasphemy as of October last year.
It documented at least four faith-based killings, three of which targeted the Ahmadiyya community.